About Me
I am a 30-year-old man, brought from Bangladesh, on the other side of the world, to the great northern American state of Minnesota, where I have built a life for myself.
I try to take what I’ve learned so far — and continue to learn every day — to help others build their lives, too. I do this through two main routes: refugee resettlement, and filmmaking.
Refugee Resettlement
I help newcomers to the country I love succeed, with a focus on jobs, housing, and egalitarianism. I’ve done that for hundreds of Ukrainians through the American Service in Ukraine, which I founded in Ukraine in the earliest days of Russia’s full scale invasion. I am now doing it for thousands of newcomers from around the world through Victoria Street with specific focus in the Heartland cities of Tulsa, Ann Arbor, and Pittsburgh. The way I do this work is unique, though I think it shouldn’t be. I take each of my newcomers’ success as a personal responsibility.
Filmmaking
Against the real important work and needs of refugees, filmmaking has to make an unassailable claim to my time and effort — and it has, time and time again. I began making films as a university student living in a house in the bad part of town with no heat in the middle of winter. I’ve released nine feature films, all of which, I’m happy to say, have reached people and made a profit. This latter part is important to me — I believe martyric film production is not justifiable (but martyric humanitarian work is).